I love Slovakia.  I also love the Czech Republic.  And if you do to–or if you want to–now’s your chance:  Fulbright Scholarships to both of these countries are available and–with the right plan of action–not out of reach for any US citizen with academic interests.  I went as a researcher but they are also–especially–looking for [...]

This is the way the world ends, not with a b-a-n-g but with an -n-i-a. At least that’s the way a good share of the world’s country names end. Having used fictional country data to make “maps” of the beginnings and endings of non-existent countries, it was an obvious next step to try it with [...]

Earlier this year I decided leave Elbonia.  Elbonia served me well during over a decade of exams about hypothetical Eastern European countries that allowed me to test whether my students could apply their abstract knowledge to new and unfamiliar cases.  But after a decade of references to the Dilbert cartoons in which I first encountered [...]

The last post pointed toward a successor that would talk more about dimensions of competition, emphasizing the “non-primary” dimensions.  This allows some attention to the emerging question of “niche” parties and points directly to the question of salience that I promised would follow.  From this we can then look at the links between the kinds [...]

Big poll yesterday from FOCUS and I’m trying to get back into the habit of updating these posts when big polls come out, so here goes a try at a quick review of recent public opinion polling events. The big picture is, as it has been in the past 12 months, a shift away from [...]